On 27 January 79 years ago, the gates of Auschwitz were torn down and the world saw with its own eyes the horror of the Shoah, the Nazis’ deliberate plan to persecute and exterminate the Jewish population.
With the Shoah, humanity reached its abyss. The uniqueness of that historical event – in terms of the conditions at the time, the scientific nature of its planning and how it was carried out – needs to be clearly stated.
This is a particularly difficult time for Jewish communities. The ferocious attack by Hamas on 7 October triggered a new wave of hatred against the Israeli people, reviving those hotbeds of anti-Semitism that had never fully disappeared and that have now found new strength, very often hidden behind criticism of the Israeli Government’s choices.
Anti-Semitism is a scourge to be eradicated, and we must work to fight it in all its forms, old and new. This is a priority for this Government and, in this demanding challenge, we are pleased to be able to rely on the expertise, skills and experience of General Pasquale Angelosanto, as National Coordinator on Combating Anti-Semitism.
It is our duty to cultivate the memory of what happened every day, and to raise awareness more and more among the younger generations.
The Government is pursuing this commitment with great perseverance and determination. I am thinking, for example, of one of the measures we are most proud of: the law to establish a Shoah Museum. Rome is home to Europe’s oldest Jewish community, and the Eternal City simply had to have a museum devoted solely to the history of the Shoah, like the museums present in other major European capitals and the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. This institution will pass on the memory of the Holocaust, and we are sure it will make a decisive contribution to ensuring that the evil of the Nazi-fascist criminal plan and the shame of the 1938 racial laws are never forgotten.
[Courtesy translation]